Preparing Design Comps

The visual design of your site should be created as a digital file in Photoshop. Photoshop is the industry standard for creating design comps for the web.

Note the following:

Be sure to set the width and height of the document in pixels, the color mode to RGB, and the resolution should be 72 dpi for most web files.

Be sure to create a Photoshop file with elements on separate layers. This is important because you may want to edit certain elements separate from the rest of the document, or turn specific layers off.

Insert any photographs or graphics into the Photoshop file at 72 dpi. This will prevent the weight of the Photoshop file from getting too large. (And prevent it from taking a million years to open the file!)

Any HTML text should be added to the Photoshop file on a separate layer. Remember you’ll show this Photoshop file to the client to get final design approval so you want the file to represent the look of the final HTML page as closely as possible.